17 June 2015

When even rape is legal

SHAME: “If there is legal backing for to marital rape, this means that women who are victims of sexual assault by their husbands have little hope for justice.”

There is overwhelming evidence to prove that marital rape is the most common form of sexual violence in India. Yet, the government refuses to make it punishable by law

Some debates appear to be timeless. Today’s raging debate on marital rape in India echoes arguments that go back more than 125 years ago to the Phulmani case when a 11-year-old Bengali girl died after being brutally raped by her 35-year-old husband. The colonial government then proposed to increase the age of consent for sexual intercourse for a girl from 10 to 12 years. But some of India’s most prominent leaders opposed the measure, and the Age of Consent Act was passed only in 1891, after much acrimony and argument.

Reflecting on this debate, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar said in 1943 (http://bit.ly/17fGw2O): “It is impossible to read the writing of those who supported orthodoxy in their opposition to the Age of Consent Bill, without realising the depth of the degradation to which the so-called leaders of the peoples had fallen… Could any sane man, could any man with a sense of shame, oppose so simple a measure? But it was opposed….” Dr. Ambedkar would have been as appalled by today’s arguments against the criminalisation of marital rape.